Friday, May 4, 2012

Violence Part Of The Social Experience In Indus Civilization

Researchers Gwen Robbins Schug and Veena Mushrif Tripathy in an interview with Anthropology news have this to say about Harappan society:

It was argued that Harappa was a rare example of a peaceful,
heterarchical state. The human skeletal material was never consulted to
address this question. Based on our evidence for both exclusion and
social differentiation in the mortuary practices at Harappa, we argue
that Harappa was not entirely peaceful and social differentiation was
part of life. We hope archaeologists working in this area will plan
future excavations to include the peripheral areas outside the cities;
excavation outside the city walls will tell us more about Indus society.

We are using the human skeletons as artifacts of the social
experience. We used the concept of structural violence in our most
recent work because it accounts for the clear distinctions we see in the
burial practices, ritual aspects, prevalence of trauma and infection.
The mortuary and bioarchaeological evidence at Harappa suggests that the
social experience in South Asia was not exceptionally different from
other early urban civilizations; the kinds of suffering and the patterns
of violence present at Harappa suggests structural violence—unequal
power, uneven access to resources, and oppression that leads to denial
of basic needs and even violence.

Lest some people get too excited about the use of the words Harappa and violence in the same sentence, let it be made clear that this violence refers to interpersonal violence present in any complex society and not violence inflicted by outsiders during war.

ShareThis

SUBSCRIBE BY RSS

SUBSCRIBE VIA EMAIL- ITS FREE!

ABOUT THIS BLOG

I am a Sedimentary Geologist. On Rapid Uplift I write mostly about topics within the geosciences, but sometimes on biological evolution and environmental issues. I like to travel and in my free time I teach 12 year old kids soccer and rugby.